


rise of the new

by stardustskywalker



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: (it continues at least), Ach-To, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Force Ghost Cameos Throughout, Force Ghosts, Force-Sensitive Finn, Force-Sensitive Poe Dameron, Kylo Ren is a Mess, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Resolved Love Triangle, Retconning Kylo's Words to Rey About Her Family, Skywalker Family Drama, Slow Build, Star Wars: The Last Jedi Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-22
Updated: 2018-07-11
Packaged: 2019-03-26 02:41:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13848372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardustskywalker/pseuds/stardustskywalker
Summary: immediately following the events of star wars: the last jedi, the resistance rises from its newborn ashes whilst working to destroy the first order before it gains control over the entire galaxy.





	1. i

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> rey comes to terms with what her destiny truly is, and once on ach-to, finn and poe talk about what to do with the sudden love triangle he got himself into during a scouting mission.

It had been a long forty-eight hours since Rey and Chewbacca flew what remained of the Resistance off of Crait, all of it spent in the eternal blue and white streaks of hyperspace.  
Rey had piloted the Falcon for most of the trip; between her and Chewbacca, they took occasional breaks to rest while Poe would take over the space of the missing, sleeping subject. For Rey, the peace and quiet she had felt since ending the Force bond -- there was probably a specific word to explain what she had done, but the thought of what Kylo made her face, at that point, was too much to look back and think of what she had gone through -- that Snoke created was more than enough to keep her piloting in peace with herself. Like Luke Skywalker felt when he became one with the Force, she was at peace with herself, but unlike his eternal peace in facing his nephew, this feeling of peace was only bound to be temporary.  
The thought of Luke was a longing memory in her mind now, almost as painful as the few hours she spent with Han. Just a few short days ago, she was unsure of what her fate was. Whatever fate she had existed with whoever had left her on Jakku so many years ago, waiting for them to come back. Maz was right to tell that whoever left her on Jakku wasn't going to come back, Rey thought now, in this period of introspection. However, after what felt like the most eventful cycle of days of her life, Rey knew what her fate was.  
It wasn't to follow her master's wish to end the Jedi for good. Rey knew that with Kylo's promotion to Supreme Leader, he had become what he aspired to be: another Vader, or even worse, the Emperor himself. Rey had to take Vader's sacrifice for Luke, but this time, there was no redemption for Kylo Ren.  
Rey would have to kill Kylo herself. It was the only way that the First Order would die; killing it at its core would be what would end it.  
With that, Rey had decided -- with Leia's approval -- to lead the remnants of the Resistance to Ach-To. This was only temporary, of course; however, it would be for long enough to get everything together and at least plan where to go next. Rey needed to breathe, she needed to discover what to do with her broken lightsaber, and she needed to figure out what to do with what was left of the Resistance.  
Finn -- in the limited time Rey had spent with him, since he was too busy watching Rose, the mechanic he had befriended in Rey's absence, recover -- had the last goal in mind as well. Everyone had that same goal in mind, which, in a way, was regathering and taking whatever life was left of the Resistance and rising from the ashes.  
And with that, Rey walked out of the outdated flight deck, going to wake Poe up before they arrived onto the island planet. She walked out of the flight deck and into the rear of the ship, where Poe slept on the floor. There were definitely not enough beds to keep even a small Resistance comfortable on the Falcon, but Rey knew that everyone was probably used to sleeping in close quarters, in uncomfortable spaces, in undesirable conditions. The cold air from the back engines of the Falcon was enough to make Rey shiver, after living on a dry planet for all of those years, even though it would become nice and cold at night on Jakku. Nevertheless, sleeping on the cold, hard floor was still some of the best sleep she had ever had.  
Rey arrived to where Poe was sleeping on his right side. She squatted toward the ground, shaking Poe's shoulder lightly with her left arm. "Poe, it's time to wake up," Rey spoke. Poe opened his eyes as she said that, and she started walking back to the pilot's seat in the front of the ship. "We're almost to Ach-To."  
It was time for Rey to become what she had to become, for the galaxy's sake as well as the Resistance's sake.  
It was time for the Resistance to be reborn.

\--

The landing onto Ach-To had been as successful as it could be. Finn had finally taken a break from watching Rose, seeing that it was his responsibility to be there whenever she woke up and needed help, which she had already done twice on the Falcon. Finn knew he was the asshole who essentially was the reason she was in this state, and so he was going to be the one who was there for her whenever she needed something from him.  
Rey understood what he was doing, once they had discussed their journeys in the three days before she made it to Crait. The face she had given him, however, was a face of sadness, of jealousy, and so Finn knew he had to explain his reasoning to Rey.  
Personally, Finn had no feelings for Rose but all of the feelings possible for Rey, but he was too focused on other issues to bring the kiss up around Rose and to explain his feelings to Rey. And so therefore, he had taken a break from both of his main issues by helping Poe scout resources on the island planet.  
In the few days since he had helped Poe Dameron in escaping the First Order, he had seen a lot of new planets, such as Crait, D-Qar, and Canto Bight, and he had faced a lot of cultural differences from what was of Stormtrooper culture -- specifically, the urge to actually do something, instead of just sitting in total complacency, stood out to him. There wasn't any of that in the First Order, you did what you were ordered to do, and that was it. Here, he had almost died out of pure hatred until Rose saved him, the second time he had been saved from death in a number of days which was countable on his two hands.  
And now, Finn was trying to distract himself from both Rey and Rose by going on a trip on the nearby islands to the Jedi village to see if they could find something more than green milk (Rey had told him that the green milk looked disgusting) and never ending porgs.  
He knew he needed some type of advice on what to do with Rey and Rose. He knew he loved Rey over Rose, but it was hard to figure out what to tell Rose about the situation at hand. And while they sat while drying off from swimming approximately two hundred meters from one small island to another (a lack of aircraft made a quick trip impossible to commit), Finn finally said something. "I need help with Rose."  
Poe had known that Rose kissed Finn on Crait, but he didn't know much more about the situation at hand. He knew, however, that Finn was more than in love with Rey, and that Finn would probably marry Rey in an instant if she felt the same way about Finn (which, considering how many times she tried to walk to Finn and Rose's area of the ship but couldn't gather the courage to do it before she finally did walk in to talk to Finn, it was likely that they both had feelings for each other). "What do you need help with, exactly?" He said, his head looking up at the sky. It was instinct, making sure that someone wasn't going to come after them.  
Finn blushed for a few seconds, but the colour in his face started to fade quickly. "I need the words to tell Rose that... the feelings in that kiss weren't mutual whatsoever." It took enough effort to admit to Poe that he had a problem in the first case. The nine-year age gap was large enough that it made Poe feel like Finn's father, who and whatever he was.  
Poe chuckled for a minute. He knew what the feeling of rejection was like. "Okay, first thing, I'm glad you asked me about this so that you didn't turn into a jerk about it. Second thing, you just need to be blunt and honest about it. Telling Rose that you don't feel the same feelings for her without all of these... metaphors and figurative language will do a lot." He moved his head downwards and looked at Finn himself. "You understand what I'm saying?"  
"Blunt and honest," Finn responded with a smile. He wondered if that would be too much, especially since he was the reason she'd ended up in the closest thing the Falcon had to a hospital bed the last two days. "Although, wouldn't that make me a jerk? I already have a bad track record with Rose as it is."  
Poe looked up at the sky once more. Relationship advice wasn't his forte, but he knew enough to help Finn in this case. "You've spent all forty-eight hours on the Falcon sitting next to her, playing the role of medic almost as much as Kalonia did. I think that you're fine, and it's probably in your best interest to tell her that your feelings aren't neutral." Poe hadn't seen much of the chief medic since before Crait, but he knew enough to know that she was alive and that she was busy with the surviving members that got injured.  
"Okay, I'll do it as soon as possible," he said, with a smile. And with that, Poe and Finn stood up and begun walking the island again. It had been five, maybe six hours, since they had started this mission, and they knew enough about the islands to know that they would be okay temporarily before anything else happened and the First Order found them here. Few trees, but a lot of grass, porgs, and other interesting creatures, such as the thala-siren, which would become useful in the case of food. There were enough huts in the Jedi village where Rey had stayed to take care of everyone, albeit it would be a little uncomfortable, and Rey would negotiate and apologise to the Caretakers. Rey had briefly explained to Finn that Luke had caught Rey and Kylo negotiating in their Force bond, and hell had been raised from there.  
It wasn't perfect, but it was temporary refuge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i write this first chapter on my birthday of what could come from episode ix after rian's writing that came out of nowhere, and i'd just like to say that it's revenge time for the resistance, coming twenty-one months from now to every theater near you.


	2. ii

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leia has a Force vision of her own variety, Finn and Poe return from their scouting of the nearby Ach-To islands, and Rey thinks about what Kylo told her about her family.

When Leia had awoken from her coma and spoke the name of her brother, her twin -- it had done something to her that she had never experienced herself.  
Of course, the Force had always been with her, since she was a young girl adopted by Bail Organa on Alderaan. That would never leave her, not like how Luke had shut himself out. But as she woke up from the coma, she had seen many things that she had never seen previously.  
The first vision she saw was the setting of two suns, and she knew where they were from. She had touched the sands of Tatooine only once when she went to rescue Han from Jabba the Hutt's palace several years ago. Whilst Luke had lived on the planet for nineteen years, she had only intersected the sands once. It would have been twice, had it not been for Vader intercepting her ship that held the Death Star plans four years prior to the rescue on Tatooine.  
But as the twin suns set, a new sun had risen. The location of this sun had changed, and although it was still a desert planet, it was the decaying shells of Star Destroyers and other Empire cruisers that had pointed out what was different about this planet, and what was different about this sun.  
And in a way, Leia knew this had come partly true. Luke had passed and Rey had taken his place as the rise of hope that the Resistance needed to survive, and that hope came right as Luke passed. For what Leia had known, the sun had set on the Skywalker family legacy, but one sun had risen again.  
But there was something that Leia had realized when thinking about that dream whilst grieving alone in one of the small huts on the Jedi island on Ach-To. She had never thought of the possibility before she lived on this island, but she had heard words that confirmed what she had begun to think. Words that, although she had never heard them herself, had been used thirty-one years prior in a conversation between two Force sensitives.  
_No, there is another._

At the end of the reconnaissance mission, if Finn had learned anything, then there were three things he needed to know: the First Order had underestimated the need to swim for long distances at once; the geography of Ach-To was fairly the same, with the same families of trees, grasses, and plants that were lined with the same species of animals on each of the mountainous islands; and that he had figured out a way to tell Rose that her feelings for him were not in anyway mutual.  
Finn and Poe had started swimming back in a way that wouldn't require them to depend on the various islands, but after swimming past one island, Poe was watching Finn struggle about one hundred meters away and didn't want to leave Finn on his own. That, and sunset was finally coming to their hemisphere of the planet. Poe definitely didn't wish to leave Finn alone at night on a foreign planet.  
So after making stops on every island for Finn to rest (Finn had originally objected to this idea, but Poe insisted on letting him rest even if for a single moment) and they arrived back to the Caretakers' island a little while after dusk.  
For Finn, coming back to report General Organa about the surrounding islands seemed difficult. With both her brother Luke -- at this point, the Resistance was small enough where everyone knew that Luke was dead after a few hours on the Falcon due to the fact that Leia kept herself away from the other members of the Resistance -- and Han dead, Finn thought that giving the General any news that seemed positive would be just as much of a task as giving her any negative news. Back on the main island, however, after having toweled off, Poe and Finn decided that it would be best for Poe to talk to her by himself. "She and I have a good relationship and a great bond," Poe told Finn in defense of this idea.  
"What happens if you need me for part of this?" Finn answered.  
Poe knew what he was doing. "I'll have you come in if that happens." The two finished their walk to the hut where Leia was staying and Poe knocked on the door before coming inside a few seconds later.  
After half a day on the island, Poe had expected Leia to feel somewhat better, given that she would have some time to grieve without the presence of a somewhat large group of people. However, Leia looked as if she had taken a turn for the worse. The white part of eyes were bloodshot and her cheeks were entirely blown up and red, almost as if she had a form of allergic reaction. The only words Poe could manage to say to Leia, who was wearing traditional mourning clothing -- was "Is this... a bad time?"  
The black suited her well but the circumstances in which she wore it were not well. Leia was able to put some form of smile on her face for the briefest moment, but not even seeing the closest person she had to a son after Ben had turned so long ago could keep a smile on her face. "It won't be a good time for a long while, so you're fine coming in here. Where's Finn?"  
"He's outside," Poe responded quietly. "I figured that it was best if I came in by myself." _That, and Finn is so enthused in his own matters, I might as well take care of this by myself_ , Poe thought.  
Leia looked toward the floor for a moment, then back up toward Poe. "Now, what exactly did you see on the other bordering islands?"  
Poe tried his best to come up with an analysis. He was still healing from his concussion when he and Finn crashed on Jakku, since there was only so much time before the Battle of Takodana. "A lot of the same as this island."  
Poe started to describe the contents of the other islands, but Leia interrupted him. "We'll be good for a few days, but then we'll have to start searching for something else." She looked down towards the floor, saying "This place holds a ghost too powerful for me to want to stay for long."  
Poe understood exactly what Leia meant. "That's perfectly understandable." He had lost his parents long ago when he was much younger, but Leia had been forced to learn how to grieve even a longer time than Poe had. "However, what are we going to do to find a new place to hideout? We didn't have any responses to the distress call whatsoever."  
Leia had spent a lot of the time since Poe and Finn had left grieving, but she smiled for the briefest second again as she began to talk. _At least grieving over Luke and Han brought up some solution_ , she remembered thinking when she recalled who might be a good person to contact. "I have an idea in mind of someone we might be able to contact," Leia responded, a sign of optimism in her voice.  
Poe smiled. At least he wasn't the only living soul on this island with some idea of what optimism could be.

Rey, after several hours attempting to fix her lightsaber, had finally taken a break from trying to fix the kyber crystal.  
She thought there had to be some way to fix the lightsaber, but any possible attempt at fixing it had gone terribly wrong.  
Although she had been alone for several hours, it hadn't been the only thing that she did on the island since the Resistance had arrived. At first glance when still on the Falcon, she had noticed the tree where all of the Jedi books were previously hidden had been destroyed from fire. It wasn't until she made it to the actual grounds where she noticed the real damage that had been gone. Thankfully, Rey had taken all of the Jedi texts with her, because something had destroyed the tree in the days whilst she was gone. _Probably Luke's way of making sure he was the last one._ Rey was convinced that it was Luke, not because of his death, but because she was sure he was angry at her for sometime after she was convinced to see Kylo gone to the light. And he was right the entire time. Rey knew that in the end, Luke had came to some conclusion to help distract the First Order from hunting the Resistance to extinction, since rumour had its way of stating that he had been an illusion all of the time he spent on Crait.  
Not even Rey's anger at herself for thinking that she could turn Kylo back to the dark side could fixate the pain she had at the broken lightsaber. Besides, it was the last thing that could have gone wrong, the lightsaber having been broken after Kylo tried to turn her to the dark side and then his way of trying to prove that the saber was his property the entire time.  
Yet, Rey had different thoughts about the words that Kylo used to describe her family in the ploy to turn her over. The words you're nobody rang through her head as strong as they had been when Kylo first said it. Why would Kylo think to tell her the truth about her family? She hadn't remembered much about them at all, even after her Force abilities developed all of a sudden when Kylo had attempted to probe her mind on Starkiller. There was no way that Kylo could have discovered that much about her family when she didn't know anything about them herself, and since her vision of Kylo turning to the light side was incomplete, she was almost certain that Kylo hadn't seen the truth himself.  
Both her vision and Kylo's vision were an illusion, made only to turn her to the dark side. And Rey was certain that she had to be someone's daughter. She hadn't ever seen two graves that belonged to her parents specifically, and she remembered seeing them leave on a ship as she was with Unkar Plutt. With that, Rey went to place her broken lightsaber back in her hut. She would find guidance to deal with her broken saber another day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Updated 5/5/2018 to add a few lines in for clarification, as well as working with the plot. Leia understanding how to use the Force was something that I wanted to expand in this fanfic, and fixing the holes between Kylo's words in the throne room about his Force vision and what we know about Rey's family from TFA was something I also wished to expand on.


	3. iii

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A First Order chapter, which looks at Kylo before, during, and after a meeting before arriving back to a familiar past.

He had had visions of a world so grand that no one could ever imagine what he saw without having to spell the details out to that person.  
At this point, the vision of a grand galaxy where Kylo Ren ruled over all its races and planets without rebellion was far away from him, so much that he was halted from even obtaining his crown, to hell with wearing it.  
The Resistance had done a lot of damage within the last few days. Even though the First Order had fought back and to some extent, killed a large majority of the Resistance's chances of ever coming back to where they were at, there was still enough hope that his mother -- Force forbid he even thought of her without some type of anger yet comfort -- and the remnants could find help from some external source, to which Kylo knew he had an somewhat limited time to either squash out any remnants, or kill the Resistance once and for all.  
Out of the two options, the easier option was surprisingly to squash any remnants of people who could help rebuild the Resistance back into its previous form. Kylo knew that the girl -- Rey -- was more than likely still alive -- he assumed so, given that she had closed the Force bond that Snoke had created, and the fact he hadn't been able to communicate with her since that point. It angered him even further that she had gained such an ability that not even he had control over, but yet Snoke could manage quite well. It was even worse that Kylo quickly discovered that both of their Force visions had been lies in more ways than just one -- one of which was that the Force bond had also manipulated the items of the Force visions that the two had of each other. He had quickly figured that out. It was more of a question whether the Force bond took Snoke much effort to take or very little effort to create, and if it took little effort, whether an old memory Kylo had managed to forget had been brought back to surface.  
Even better, the block in their communication had caused him to become completely dark in regards to the Resistance and where they were, and he knew that if she was there, it was going to be some kind of hell trying to squash anything out of the Resistance. Kylo was sure of that, and it was time to create a strategy that would finish the Resistance once and for all. With that, the throne over the galaxy was his.  
A meeting was to start in half an hour between him and the high ranking officers who were still alive following the battle at Starkiller Base and the battles above D-Qar and Crait. This meeting took place on an older Star Destroyer that was in route to the First Order's new base on a planet long known as part of the Empire. Although the First Order had taken some losses from the two battles and the attack on Starkiller Base, the First Order had enough officers who were somewhat ready for promotion and would take on the tasks of their former supervisors. And in that, Kylo felt nervous. The thoughts of an entirely different high command with the only remnants of the former command being Hux and himself made Kylo worrisome, especially since the old stormtrooper he had almost killed, FN-2187, had barely been squashed out of the brains of the First Order when Starkiller was destroyed. Having to make major changes in any form of leadership made him nervous in ways that he couldn't quite explain. Perhaps it was the fear of collapse from more officers deserting the Order, maybe it was the idea that not everyone was ready to take on their new responsibilities. Hell, Kylo even felt that way, since he had killed Snoke in order to get the girl on his side and all of that had failed.  
Was he really ready to become the next supreme leader?  
Kylo sighed, right before he walked into the command meeting. He, like everyone else, was not ready to take on such new roles. Snoke was right in some ways, especially that he wasn't ready to become Vader. But there was a way to secure his way at the top of the crown.  
Kylo opened the door to, surprisingly, see a few familiar faces from his studies of the Empire. Old leaders from the days of the Empire, probably the very few and remaining leaders that hadn't killed themselves in their imprisonment under the days of the New Republic. How they had survived the death of the Hosnian System, he was sure of it. Snoke's work. They were likely expecting to see Snoke as the supreme leader, not himself, and Kylo looked almost too surprised at their presence.  
"You must be expecting my former master," Kylo spoke loudly enough for the members in the room to hear his voice, but no further than that. "However, he is dead at the hands of the Resistance." It wasn't necessarily a lie, it was probably a victory to the Resistance that Snoke was dead despite the loss of the strong majority of their terror organization with it. Even better, it followed the idea that the girl had killed Snoke, not himself. "That is proof right there," Kylo faked some form of grief with those words, "of why we must crush all of them. But whilst they are vulnerable, we must crush out any hope that they can find to rebuild. We do not have time to waste on finding their whereabouts until we have crushed any support they have."  
Most of the officers in the room clapped after that, but a few looked at him in fear. Hux rolled his eyes but did nothing other than that. "We cannot wait any longer to start inching toward killing any remaining sources of support they have. Does anyone disagree with this?"  
No one responded to Kylo's question, which he took as beneficial. At least they all have enough manners to take their positions as a privilege that can be taken away. "Good. We will need to get more product imported from the systems we have already claimed as our own, and claim new ones which show promise. With the New Republic gone, that shouldn't be a hard task to get more systems on our side. Any suggestions?"  
One of the younger commanders -- a dark haired man who could easily pass for a teenager, but had pale skin that was in comparison to the snow on Starkiller -- spoke up. "Systems that the New Republic took from the Empire should be easy enough to receive. I would say that it is best that we take those, get their resources, and possibly move from there."  
One of the older ex-Empire officers nodded his head in agreement. "There will likely be more ex-Imperial symphasizers on those systems who weren't labeled a threat to the Rebel Alliance nor the New Republic. I also recommend that we take those systems first."  
"Quite well agreed," Hux spoke, nodding his head in approval. "Take what we know will be easy, and work from there on reclaiming the Empire's territory."  
There was one underlying question left in the room. "What will we do with any Resistance officers or possible symphasizers that we find?" The same young commander from earlier asked the question.  
Kylo smiled, thinking of finding one of them and making sure that their names made it to his mother. "We'll make sure to burn their names and bodies down to the ground." Those words came out of his mouth without mercy, knowing it was them raising hell that would keep him from his crown. He was thankful not to mention his mother, however, since that would give him looks that he didn't want to have to deal with. "Hux will take on the work to finalise our new territories, and I will use a battalion of stormtroopers to help me kill anyone we find that will not stand in line."  
After other creations of plans took place, the meeting came to an end and Kylo and Hux left the room together, both moving to the bridge. Once arriving, Hux moved closer to Kylo's ear, and warned Kylo: "Don't get too motivated with killing your mother's legacy when she's the only source of motivation that they have left."  
For the second time in the same day, Kylo couldn't help but smile, but he quickly frowned again when realising Hux's intentions. "That legacy died the same day that the New Republic died."  
Kylo started to look out of the glass to the planet on the other side. They were planning on landing soon. The lava defenses of the planet were visible from kilometers above in space, and lit space above in the same way that the light of a star or the light of hyperspace would. Mustafar had been such an easy planet to capture, especially since it was abandoned after the Empire fell, leaving a lack of resistance to obtaining the planet as no one occupied it. Nonetheless, just being close to the planet where Kylo's grandfather had once resided on was more than enough to make Kylo feel powerful.  
Kylo began to briskly walk back to his personal chambers and once he arrived, he closed the door. He took out the container where the remnants of Vader's helmet laid and opened the container. Thankfully, the helmet had been away from Starkiller and had been away from the dreadnaught and all of the other Star Destroyers which had been lost during their chase of the Resistance. "Grandfather," he spoke quietly, his voice growing louder, "give me guidance to kill the Resistance before they rise once again. Give me strength to find her and kill the Jedi before they rise once again."  
Little did Kylo know that much more was coming to change the fate of the galaxy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IB exams are done, so I now have the summer to finish writing this out and enjoy myself as well (no homework for once!)


	4. iv

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Force-sensitive things, a promise to Leia, and finding out things that help move the story along.

Training to become the Jedi Master she didn't feel like she was was hard enough for Rey, but having no saber to hold on to and no confidence from a mentor to tell her what she was doing was right made things even worse.  
Of course, she had lived by herself for years on a desert planet that was specifically known for its harsh life. But having lived as a scavenger for so long without any answers to who her family was and if they would ever come back for her, she had a lack of confidence in herself to become something more than what she was. She needed some form of validation so that she could thrive and rise to become what she truly was. Rey knew that Leia wouldn't be able to help her much more than what she already knew, so it was just Rey by herself. Besides, Leia was busy trying to contact someone to get them the forces they desperately needed.  
Training had been rough in the last two days since they had arrived. Although she came down from the top of the island every night to spend time with Finn, Poe, and Rose -- the latter two whom she became very close with despite Rose's romantic glances toward Finn -- she felt lonely in the two days she spent alone from everyone else.  
Using her staff as a lightsaber, Rey did her best job to practice her Jedi skills. She would spend her late mornings and afternoons training with her staff, longing for the saber to be fixed but knowing she was grateful to have an okay alternative. Each morning she woke up and meditated. In the three times she had done so, every time she had grown much better at maintaining the Light side over the dark, not falling back to the cavern anymore. Rey wondered if it was Snoke who manipulated her thoughts to lead her to the cave just as he had drawn her to Kylo, but inside, Rey knew she'd find that answer in the future and not in the immediate present. That was too deep of a question to find an answer with Rey's current abilities.  
In the present, Rey had almost finished meditating, when she started to fall back to reality as she usually did. However, this time felt different. The Force had felt especially strong as she slowly started to open her eyes, until she saw a old, small, sickly green creature next to her. The creature was wearing old Jedi robes and had white hair around her ears. Although Rey (at first instinct, of course) started to point her staff at him, the green creature did nothing but laugh when the staff accidentially moved through him without any problems. "Funny it is, how never told you anything about force ghosts Master Skywalker did."  
"Master Yoda!" The words came out of Rey's mouth suddenly, with Rey wondering how she knew this mysterious being and his name, too. She turned from full shock into confusion as she moved back aways onto one edge of the rock. _How would I know that when I've never seen this creature in my life?_  
"How you know that name, you must be wondering," Yoda said. "Many things you must wonder, I understand."  
With this Rey took to think of the question she wanted an answer to the most. "When Kylo Ren told me my parents were no one important, was he lying to me?"  
Yoda smiled as his ghost moved closer to Rey. "Interesting, it is, that this question you ask me is the one you take most curiosity in. Lying, yes, Ren was. Your parents were proud to have you as a child, but saw you as a threat to its nature, the Dark side of the force did. Leave you on Jakku, they did, to keep you safe."  
"Who are my par--" Rey began to speak with a hint of demand in her voice.  
"Discover your parents on your own, you must," Yoda spoke. "Show you when you're ready, the Force will. An already well-trained Jedi, you are. A great Jedi, years on Jakku helped you become."  
With the final words out of Yoda's mouth spoken, the force ghost suddenly vanished. Rey was slightly upset. She could have spoken with the old Jedi Master for hours more even if she was told to wait for answers to each question.  
Still, Rey took what answers she _had_ received with comfort. Rey knew that she had a family who loved her. She wasn't abandoned on Jakku for no reason more than just drinking money.   
Rey had a family, even if it was on the other side of the galaxy. That was what mattered to her.

At this point, Finn had finally said _screw it_ to himself over Rose. He couldn't lie to her anymore over their supposed relationship. It bothered Rey and now, it bothered him.  
That morning, he decided to take a walk with her before they went to work on the Falcon together. Since the Falcon was the Resistance's main ship at the moment, it was important that they worked to improve the satellite scanner so that they could get a message relayed to General Organa's secret contact. Everyone had a guess to who it was, but Finn and Rose had been assigned to fix the problem so that they could discover who it was and everyone could give or get whatever credits they owed and earned from each other.  
When Finn reached the door to Rose's hut, he knocked quietly. Rose answered within a minute and opened the door to see him there, smiling as he stood waiting. "Hey," Finn spoke, anticipating a response from Rose. For some reason, Finn could feel some form of radiance off of Rose, sensing that she was happy. However, he quickly noticed this. He didn't attribute this strange knowledge to himself. It was the first planet of the Jedi, Finn knew that from Han before Kylo killed him. There was some things that didn't need explanation. "Do you want to go on a walk before we work on the Falcon?"  
Rose was taken by surprise by this request. "Sure," she answered. She walked back inside to get her engineering jacket and walked outside of her hut. Finn closed the door after she exited and they began walking downhill, but in a different direction than to the Falcon.  
Rose spoke first. "Do you think that there's a chance that there are more Force sensitives, other than just Rey?"  
Finn silently cussed to himself, knowing that this kind of conversation would get him nowhere. "I think so," Finn responded, following through with the topic. "Rey can't be the only one out there. That wasn't what Kylo Ren necessarily planned to do, start another purge of the Jedi."  
"Did you ever meet him? Other than exchanging glances on Jakku and then getting injured on Starkiller?" Rose questioned Finn seriously.   
Finn took a minute to think. Hux was commanded to watch over the training of all of the stormtroopers and Kylo did something entirely different. However, there was one instance where Finn had dealt with Kylo. "Once that I can remember," Finn responded. "I was probably fifteen at the time. A few other trainees and I were brought to a separate area than everyone else one afternoon. Each one of us was individually questioned, and one of the witnesses of the questioning was Ren himself. He and I never exchanged words. We didn't do so until the battle at Starkiller."  
Rose frowned. Finn didn't know if that was good or bad. "Look, there's something I need to tell you," Finn said, deciding to tell Rose the truth.  
Rose nodded in return.  
"The feelings that I have for you?" Finn started to say. He was growing increasingly nervous trying to tell her his feelings about her. "They're just platonic."  
Finn watched for Rose's response. It wasn't in anyway bad, it was pleasant. "I understand," Rose says. "You like Rey. And I give my blessing to your relationship with her. I just... I didn't know how you felt."  
Finn was stunned by her calm response. "I apologise for not telling you sooner. I just didn't know how to tell you."  
Finn smiled as he walked with Rose towards the Falcon. What seemed like the hardest task in his life was done.

A somewhat strange occurence happened to Poe whilst he worked in the makeshift command center on the third day on Ach-To. The command center was in a hut and used old technology from the age of the Rebel Alliance that the Resistance had managed to pick up on Crait, so the room was ancient in more ways than one and it was crowded. Poe avoided the hut like the plague but had been told to come to the room on General Organa's command, which usually was a foretelling that something either very bad or very good was about to happen.  
This time, Poe entered the room as three others -- Finn, Rey, and Kalonia, a rather odd combination -- walked out. As Rey held the door open, Poe knew that he was getting into a mess of some kind.  
Once Poe entered the room, Rey closed the door to leave him with one other person: General Organa herself. "Poe, come sit down," she said solemnly. She sat on what was a bed before the Resistance had arrived and took over the caregivers' jobs of keeping the place orderly, something Poe saw as the lack of order some times in the Resistance.  
Poe looked at her face. This was the middle of the afternoon, and so Leia had no evidence of mourning painted to her face. However, Poe had spent enough time with Leia to know that there was a lot more than what usually met the eye. "What happened and where?"  
The words came out of Poe's mouth a lot quicker than they would for most people, but Leia at this point was used to Poe being able to read her quicker than most people did. It was just one of those things she accustomed herself to as she made Poe her surrogate son after she left the New Republic and Ben had turned to the dark side, not like she had seen him much, anyway, with him constantly on planets far from modern civilization. Leia silently sighed and pointed the small holo between the two of them, which lit up to show images of terror on multiple systems. A couple of systems which had sided with the Resistance and offered supplies before the destruction of the Hosnian system seemed to be the main target, which made sense, given their sudden absense from the galaxy. "It looks like the First Order has decided to take our absence from... society, I guess you can say, to their advantage."  
Poe, albeit understanding why the First Order had taken advantage of those two systems, knew something else was up that Leia had lightly implied. "What else has happened?"  
Leia gave the slightest indication of a smile as she turned off the holo. "I found a way to make communication with the contact we discussed." Leia stopped to take a breath for a quick second before she said more. "And I've done so, albeit with more problems at the same time."  
Poe slammed his hands onto the table. "What problems? Hopefully, they can be fixed?"  
Leia shook her head in frustration. Finn, Rey, and Kalonia had taken the news much better than Poe could, and it frustrated herself just as much as it did to Poe, clearly. "We're going to be stuck here until I can get a response back. We have no means of getting more than a few of us off this island at a time, and I'm not risking taking us all off this island when there's so few of us."  
Poe didn't know what to feel. He understood the situation completely -- the planet that they were on was a safe place with its location unknown to the First Order -- but yet he knew the lack of at least some of the fallen Resistance pilots and crew was his fault since he had chosen to take on the dreadnaught by himself. "Understood," Poe responded. He looked at the door and back at Leia. "If I promise to fly you to your contact once they make contact back, may I be dismissed?"  
Leia smiled. It seemed like there had been a change in Poe in those few minutes in which they met, for the better. "Yes, Commander, you may."

Poe closed the door with little noise, deciding to go back to his hut before he got involved in something else. There wasn't much to do that didn't have at least one capable person already assigned to it, despite the Resistance's low numbers. It didn't phase anyone one bit, however.  
Poe finished the walk to his hut and opened the door to find Finn inside, asleep on the bed that was originally in there. He and Finn had decided to room together, since it was easier to room with someone you knew rather well instead of someone who was practically a stranger. And Finn, Poe knew rather well despite only knowing each other for a little over a week.  
Poe sat on the cot that was placed on the other side of the room from Finn. He made sure to not lay down, for he was sure he'd fall asleep almost immediately after hitting the pillow. No amount of caf could ever extinguish the constant feeling of tiredness when you had to command any group of people, and even just a few were more than enough. Besides, there wasn't any caf on the godforsaken island, and Poe wasn't going to get anything soon. At least Poe was getting the best night's sleep he could have, given that nightmares plagued him every night as they did everyone else in the Resistance.  
However, Poe's nightmares had grown worse in the previous few days. Ever since he'd been interrogated by Kylo Ren on the Star Destroyer in what felt like ages ago, he faced different renditions of that day. Poe had felt different as well, almost like he could feel things that he knew were abnormal.  
And at that point, everything he had done made sense.

Sitting by the firepit on one side of the cottages that same day as night fell on the island, Poe sat next to Finn and Kaydel on a log as Rey came in and out of her cottage quickly before sitting next to Rose on the wooden log on the right of Poe and Kaydel. Silence had fallen on their conversation awkwardly, but it quickly rose back up as Rey sat down. "Poe, you're going with General Organa to meet with her... friend?"  
Kaydel's words struck with Poe all of sudden, mostly because Finn nudged him to get his attention, mouthing the words _You okay_? He must have tuned them out, finally seeing Rey and trying to figure out when to speak to her about his sudden discovery over being Force-sensitive. "Yes," Poe responded. "Once she finally hears back from them."  
"Speculation was flying sky high about that," Rose said. "We assumed that when you were asked to come in to her cottage separately, that was what that was about."  
Finn nodded as he looked toward the other side of the fire. Rations were being passed around, and Rey sighed as she took her share last of the group. "I swear that the day after this war ends, I'm going to find a restaurant somewhere on whatever inhabited planet we end up on and eat something that's not some foresaken version of rations."  
Kaydel and Rose looked at Rey strangely, and Poe realised that the two of them hadn't necessarily had all of the blanks filled in about Rey, not that Poe was necessarily the most up to date about Rey either. Most of what he knew was either an assumption proved by asking Rey himself or what Finn had told him about her. "Scavenger," he and Finn said at the same time. They nodded as Poe looked down to start opening his pack of rations and saw Rey put her rations down instead of eating them. _This was his chance._  
"Rey, is there somewhere that we can talk? Alone?" Poe asked before Rey could go elsewhere and while there wasn't any conversation in the group.  
Rey nodded silently before leading Poe to behind the cottages in a small clearing. It was much quieter here, where the sound of chatter was at a minimum like the ocean surrounding them. To Poe it was an appropriate place, where word of this conversation would be limited to being heard just to the two of them. "What do you need to talk about?" Rey asked in a solemn tone as she stopped walking and turned to him.  
Poe hadn't needed to think of how to say this. It was simple enough. "I discovered that I'm Force-sensitive today."  
Rey's expression remained mostly unchanged as he went into his thoughts and eventually, came back to his conclusion. She closed her eyes and held her hands out to his, breathing slowly. "Do you feel the little things around you? The world around us touched by every little particle of light and darkness?"  
It took Poe just one second to respond as he followed what Rey did and said. "Yes."  
Poe opened his eyes and Rey did so soon after, releasing her hands from his. "I believe you," she responds. "However, before you say anything else, just know that I don't know how well I'll be at training. Leia may or may not already know that you're not Force-sensitive, I have no clue on that one. And please, don't tell anyone about the handtouching. I don't need... someone, anyone, thinking that I'm your girlfriend, okay? Because someone will probably become jealous, and I'm unsure whether they know if I like them back or not."  
Poe knew exactly who _someone_ was, and he knew to keep quiet. "Agreed, on all of it."  
And with that, Poe knew so much more about himself, and he knew that Finn's crush on Rey was reciprocated.


End file.
